Horse Hair Surface Decoration

A friend just contacted me with the sad news of the passing of a dear friend of hers. She has been charged with the responsibility of making an urn for his ashes and would love to use horse hair decoration. I assume she must mean horse hair raku and I have no familiarity with the technique. Do any of you have any suggestions that would be helpful, firing temperature, type of clay, how much horse hair, etc? Thank you for being a deep pond of knowledge, Joan Klotz.

A friend just contacted me with the sad news of the passing of a dear friend of hers. She has been charged with the responsibility of making an urn for his ashes and would love to use horse hair decoration. I assume she must mean horse hair raku and I have no familiarity with the technique. Do any of you have any suggestions that would be helpful, firing temperature, type of clay, how much horse hair, etc? Thank you for being a deep pond of knowledge, Joan Klotz.

www.pyromaniapottery.ca is a wonderful studio gallery on Vancouver Island Canada... one of their potters makes incredible horsehair pots, and I'm sure that she would be more than happy to assist you.

Horse hair decorating is done at a much lower temperature (1100-1200 F or so) than raku 1850 F.
The piece is removed and long horse tail hairs are contacted with the hot surface which carbonizes into the surface. One or two hairs at a time quickly before the piece cools.
The surface is usually burnished with terra sig prior the bisque firing (^09)

For a burial urn, I would think you would want a vitrified clay body. The horse hair is porous and soft by the nature of the process.

Use a fine grained clay body, and burnish it before firing. Heat to 1200F, pull it from the kiln, add the horse hair QUICKLY, then cover it with a bucket to slow the cooling. Wash it down after it cools, let it dry for a couple of days, then wax and buff the surface with any car wax.

Use a fine grained clay body, and burnish it before firing. Heat to 1200F, pull it from the kiln, add the horse hair QUICKLY, then cover it with a bucket to slow the cooling. Wash it down after it cools, let it dry for a couple of days, then wax and buff the surface with any car wax.

Thanks very much for this concise and helpful reply, Neil, I too was under the impression that raku firing was requiredChristine

Use a fine grained clay body, and burnish it before firing. Heat to 1200F, pull it from the kiln, add the horse hair QUICKLY, then cover it with a bucket to slow the cooling. Wash it down after it cools, let it dry for a couple of days, then wax and buff the surface with any car wax.

Thanks very much for this concise and helpful reply, Neil, I too was under the impression that raku firing was requiredChristine

It is like raku firing in that you're pulling the piece from the kiln while still hot, but you're not doing the post-firing reduction. One word of warning- if you get too much hair trapped under the cooling bucket, it can cause some reduction and grey out the surface. Before you cover it make sure there's very little unburned hair in there.

Use a fine grained clay body, and burnish it before firing. Heat to 1200F, pull it from the kiln, add the horse hair QUICKLY, then cover it with a bucket to slow the cooling. Wash it down after it cools, let it dry for a couple of days, then wax and buff the surface with any car wax.